At 9.00 a.m. it was starting: Martín Cabrera, managing partner of Technology, and Sofía Torres, in charge of Human Resources, welcomed those who came to share a coffee at Moove-it, a software, web and mobile products developer and designer company. The idea is part of a cycle that the investment and export promotion institute Uruguay XXI has been carrying out since April and in which the service exporting companies of the Smart Talent program offer an open space to share with those interested in working in sectors such as corporate services, information and communication technologies (ICT), pharmaceutical and health, and architecture and engineering.
Although, as a country, Uruguay's strong point is the export of products - mainly food - services have for some time now been opening up the field in the ranking of foreign sales and encountering a limitation in the available workforce. According to Cabrera - who relies "on figures from CUTI [Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology]" - there are some 20,000 people employed in the technology area, of which 13,000 are technicians.
This lack of availability is what leads companies in the sector to resort to employees abroad. In the case of Moove-it, more than 15% of its staff lives in other countries: two people in Colombia, three in Argentina and four in the United States, including one of the three managing partners.
Although the systems engineer said that the company "is not committed" to remote work, he said he had to resort to this modality because "in Uruguay there is no available offer". "In addition to the physical obstacle and the bandwidth - not in terms of connectivity, but in terms of communication - there is the training. Induction - which is the process of preparing a person to be able to do something operationally in the company - takes a month, so we only look abroad for senior profiles", that is, with at least three years of experience in the field.
Titanic fight
Another consequence of the shortage of supply is the "constant bidding" among companies for employees. "Here, young people receive job offers all the time. We all want to hire Uruguayans, because of a cultural issue, roots or whatever, so there is a titanic fight between companies to conquer the worker, seduce him and retain him, a very serious problem" in the sector, he considered.
In turn, much of the "reduced" supply is employed freelance, something that for Cabrera is "a double-edged sword", since "in general they are handled in informality, and when they do it formally, we compete with the salaries they are paid from outside, that is, with a salary 80% higher," since exports of services in Uruguay have a total exemption from income tax on economic activities.
But also in the import of talent there are obstacles; in this case, commercial and instrumental. "In Argentina it is almost impossible to hire, due to the inconvenience of deposits in this country, tax withholdings and exchange rate. In Paraguay something similar happens, as well as in Chile," he explained.
Soft affinities
As part of the Day of the Future, they also talked about working in a company of this new generation and the type of worker they aspire to hire. "For us, the most important thing is the soft skills: that humanly the person has certain affinities with what we do, that he or she is a good team player and has a passion for learning new things," he said. "We're not looking for them to be a tech guru, but we are looking for someone who is curious."
The 41 people who work in the double office on Bulevar Artigas are, on average, young men, between 20 and 30 years old. "We prefer a balance [between genders], but the reality is that when we make a call we get many more resumes from men, and we choose by suitability for the position, so it is a probabilistic issue," said Cabrera when asked about it.
As for the schedule, he maintains that the "ideal" schedule is six hours: "We tried four hours, but it didn't work, due to productivity issues. For us, there is no debate that six hours is optimal, but we have eight-hour employees because of a commitment issue, since there is so little work available, the eight-hour schedule guarantees exclusivity with Moove-it," he said.
They themselves define their workplace as "more informal than the market average", without "rigid standards of dress", and say that there are several spaces dedicated to recreation and entertainment, since for them "comfort is super important". "We try to make available, as far as possible, what the workers request, so that they can work in the best way, both in hardware and software and also in more everyday issues, such as fruit, tea, coffee, milk, among others. We also have a space on Fridays when the company invites the food and we get together to share lunch and exchange knowledge. We work with a lot of flexibility, but always hand in hand with trust, otherwise it doesn't work," he said.
About Moove-it
The company started ten years ago and, since then, it has had two "failures" to its credit, said the partner director of Technology, Martín Cabrera. "We started as two partners, with three principles: not working for anyone, having fun and doing quality things, because at that time we thought that the latter was enough to be successful. However, in our first attempt, we ran into logistical obstacles, and we ended up melting down. In a second opportunity we made a swerve and changed technology, towards the Ruby language. We had already failed in logistics and we had learned it, but we failed again, this time in the business model: we made an application -Falta Uno- to organize football matches, but we wanted to charge a commission for renting a field and we were burned again", he said. Today the company is focused in the United States, working for start-ups and building products for its clients, and no longer developing its own ideas, unless they are for internal management. He also opened an office in Austin (Texas) that is a mix of hostel and cowork for start-ups, finding a niche in rental services, both for accommodation and work, which "are generally very expensive," he explained. As for their clients, Cabrera said that they do not specialize "in any particular field," although he explained that they do have "filters, which have to do with a question of ethics more than anything else.
Source: La Diaria
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